Hopper Sketches

Seek To Comfort

         Humanity's deepest desires are to escape our ultimate fate, find our dreams and realize our greatest hopes. However, as the title suggests film noir does not seek to comfort it's audience and suggest that dreams can come true. In this dark and non-linear world, cynicism, alienation and despair are dominant. People do good things for the wrong reasons and vice versa. This is a world of insecurity and the people who live in it are not straightforward or recognizable in terms of classic narrative structures. They are broken, twisted and damaged - yet we travel with them on their doomed journeys. Their own hopes are not dissimilar to ours - security, stability, freedom and even love. But they seek it in far different ways - through graft, betrayal, crime and murder.

Paul Batters
Fatalism and Futility in Film Noir
Silverscreenclassicsblog
2018

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Odds Against Tomorrow
1959

On the Road

         We see Baker walking slowly on the balcony of his hotel room, warming up on his trumpet, then packing it up and checking out how he looks before he goes to the gig. We cut to old TV footage of a young Baker in San Remo in 1956 and then back to him, now in close-up. The sense of how lonely life can be on the road is palpable.

The Enduring Enigma of Chet Baker
Steve Provizer
The Arts Fuse
2025

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unkown
Chet Baker

                https://artsfuse.org/320300/jazz-commentary-the-enduring-enigma-of-chet-baker/

Dark Reflections #46

Big Heat

Blood Simple

Raging Bull

Bound

Death of a Cyclist

Carancho

Angel Heart

Crime of Passion

Last Seduction

While the City Sleeps

Vertigo

Touch of Evil

Paris, Texas

Peeping Tom

Decoy

Mr Klein

Lady from Shanghai

Night Moves

Port of Call

Onto a Path

         The trajectory or downward spiral starts out as happiness, then temptation, then hubris, and finally, damnation. And all because of an irresistible vixen who cursed our poor protagonist onto a path of self-destruction. Almost like they turned the neon lights onto the Garden of Eden.

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unknown

Wrong Clue

For many people this is probably their favorite soundtrack. I'm one of those people.

Get the World

Exist in Real Life

           Seems that Hitchcock is simply saying that utopia does not exist in real life. We may be able to imagine some kind of perfect situation for ourselves, but it can never be achieved in reality. There will always be something to throw off the equilibrium of things. In a sense we all suffer from vertigo, and as Midge says to Johnny ''there's no losing it''.

Mikey Gee
Essay on Vertigo
Sept 2011

Play My Horn

But if i didn't have to make money, i would still play my horn.

Sonny Rollins

More Poster Noir

Aleksander Szczepaniak